Epistory – Typing Chronicles

As a way to improve your typing, I don't think it's particularly effective compared to other methods. As a game it's only mildly entertaining.
However there is another, probably unintended, application which I think this game actually excels wonderfully at:
Foreign language learning.
Hear me out: One of the most effective ways to actually acquire language is just huge amounts of exposure with different contextual cues. The outmoded conventional language learning approach assumes that we learn by memorizing grammar and mapping words to and from our target language to our native one. In this model, we "learn" a word by translating it. But that kind of learning will never make us fluent. It will give us a halting, practical knowledge that will help us trudge through various situational needs, but it will never give the open, intuitive, and natural understanding of native speakers. To achieve this, we need hundreds and perhaps thousands of hours of exposure to form a large collection of synaptic links in different networks across the brain, which recreate the holistic structure of the language in our brains. The practical application of this theory is known as "Comprehensible Input," and is advocated for by a lot of polyglots online, with many resources you can explore.
But surely just typing random words would do absolutely nothing to help us learn them?
Well, the great thing about this game is that the words are non-random in a rather unique way: they are thematically linked to visual elements of the game in the same vague way that we link concepts in our mind. "Fiery" elements have words like "burn" and "campfire," sure, but also "oven" and "wick." Even without knowing the words, you are forming a network of verbal relations, without the intermediate step of translation, in a way you wouldn't in most normal circumstances.
For a native speaker, the number or words is not huge, and so you see a lot of the same ones over and over, which feels a bit boring. But, in a foreign language, the relatively small dictionary is actually a plus, because you will type the same words (most of which will be new to you) over and over. It's annoying in your native language, but it's very good practice for language acquisition. Often the first hurdle to listening comprehension is simply knowing which words exist so you can separate them mentally. Knowing how they are spelled will help you identify them in speech and be able to look them up in a dictionary, and gives you another peg to hang them on in the mind. These are all various forms of "acquisition" without "learning."
And in general, writing, or typing, is a separate neurophysical process from listening, speaking, or reading. That means you are establishing a whole other network of intuition to store your foreign language model in. I don't know about you, but I often have the surreal experience of "remembering" my internet passwords only by muscle memory on a keyboard: that is, I have passwords which I could not write, speak, or imagine a visual projection of, but which come out on a keyboard automatically because they are now stored primarily in "muscle memory." You will develop this kind of memory for foreign language words by typing them, and this will help you recognize and recall their spelling and provide yet more network effects.
Another great thing about the way this game is designed, is that the menu and game language are separate settings, and additionally, the "story" is always read in English voice. This means you can play the game multiple times with varying levels of exposure depending on your language level, you will get more out of it each time you play.
So, in short, if you are a foreign language learner and your target language is one of the 11 included here I would highly recommend this, even over most other "language learning" games on Steam, which tend to lean on conventional "learn the translation" approaches and seldom provide any mechanics to encourage the kind of repetitive exposure this gives you. Obviously, you will need many, many, many more hours and types of exposure to learn a language than this game can provide, but the kind of exposure it provides is rather unique and a great addition to a curriculum.

Epistory is a game that successfully combines an action adventure game with RPG elements and typing! Words appear over enemies and you must type the words as fast as you can to kill the enemies before they reach you. You are also given magical abilities; lightning, fire, ice and wind each with its own unique properties, i.e fire destroys the next word, ice freezes enemies, wind pushes enemies back and lighting can destroy words on other enemies.
+ Killing enemies rewards you with experience allowing you to upgrade different magical abilities and attributes.
+ Amazing narrative that kind of hides in the background, revealed towards the end
+ Unique Art style
Conclusion:
The entire game is controlled by keyboard, I highly doubt steam controller will be viable for this game. This is a fun casual game that was a huge surprise for me. For those looking for a fun game and want to improve your typing speed, this is a great game.

This is the story of a fox and a little girl....
........... This is the beginning of your adventure. The fantastic world that unfolds before you and the story told as you progress will lead you pleasantly to the end.
The various environments of the game will reveal themselves as you progress through the story, unlocking different "points" they will appear and seem to build and fill with elements and colors.
Graphically, the game is rendered as if it were made of paper; old book pages, origami, and papier-mâché represent the world you're exploring. It's all incredibly colorful and feels like a child's imagination.
The audio creates the perfect atmosphere, with music and sounds suited to each setting; the narration is perfectly understandable and will accompany you every step of the way, telling you the story.
The gameplay is very simple: you'll have to move around to explore the various areas, and to cast your spells or perform simple actions, you'll simply have to type the words that appear. (Type game).
The puzzles are easy and will allow you to fully enjoy this game and the narrative.
Personally, I found the plot really enjoyable, and there's no shortage of twists.
I really enjoyed it!
A round of applause to the developers for making it happen.

I went in expecting to play a chill typing game, but instead I got an absolute gem. Epistory - Typing Chronicles is a perfect example of a typing game done right.

First off, the game is beautiful. I absolutely loved the "paper" like map grids and the whole design choice style. The environments are absolutely stunning, and you can tell a lot of love went into crafting each region/dungeon. Everything loads in smoothly, and the animations for when you unlock new regions is also so well done with the paper flipping in. The narration also provides a really pleasant experience as you go through the regions as well, and it gave me Bastion/Transistor vibes. The story is pretty mysterious the whole time, until you get to the very end and it makes more sense.

As for the gameplay, Epistory does it so well. You have some typical stuff like typing words to break blocks, interact with puzzles, and defeat enemies. However, Epistory adds in a refreshing take on the genre by introducing 4 elemental forms of typing damage, which each have unique effects on enemies. The elemental effects also help you progress through the world, as some previous parts were locked behind obtaining the next elemental effect. A lot of these end up being pretty simple puzzles, but it added to the gameplay. The progression feels really smooth and well thought out as you traverse the world. the Difficulty in the game isn't all too hard, but it is challenging enough that you do have to pay attention to your typing speed. Through this game I learned that I'm great at typing words with 4-5 letters or below, but once it gets longer than that, I begin struggling.

Overall, Epistory highly outperformed my expectations, and I think this is a <10hr game everyone should give a shot to.

Just finished this game, and I will say - it's lovely, but it's not without its flaws.
Let's start with what I liked:
1. Typing gameplay!! I've never played a game where typing was a core mechanic, so it was really fun
2. The puzzles were challenging, but it was the right amount of challenging. It took a little circling (literally, in some cases) but I was able to solve them
3. The voice acting is really good!
4. The art direction is really unique and cool. The origami aesthetic was really sweet
Now for what I didn't quite like:
1. Sometimes, I'd mistype and end up frozen because I'd accidentally hit the first letter of one of the other powers - essentially leaving me open to die when facing barrages of enemies
2. Some of the words were quite difficult and I'd have to slow down. This is personal preference, obviously, and I don't fault the devs for it at all - it did expand my vocabulary :)
3. The art style completely changed for the ending cinematic. I won't say I disliked it, it was more so jarring to see.
Overall - I think it's a gorgeous game and it's got me interested in finding more games like this!

This game is severely undercut by its lack of story telling skill. It's a visually stunning game, wildly creative, smooth, and very enjoyable to play. If I had to be specific though on the recommend I'd rate it a 3/5 with the knock really being for the delivery of the story itself, which had the opportunity to be told in a way that created a legendary game vs. just a cool one. I'm an avid writer and reader, so I fall into (I think) the target audience for this literary/bookish type game.
Combat feels fluid, love how easy it is to toggle types of magic, feels seamless to wield with the keyboard. The jarring issue is really just, the writing. I think what ended up happening is they went all in on detatched/generic/classic/myth style narration. Like a kids storybook. It's difficult to articulate but it ended up leaning way too much into cliche/canned/static/stale. Feels almost procedurally generated rather than a story you feel immersed into and that's a huge, unnecessary miss. This game falls victim to "telling", there's an expression in writing: show don't tell. At every single juncture, the extent of the story telling skill is, "She felt sad." "She felt loneliness." Stop telling us how she feels, show us. Narrate the cold feeling in her gut or her breathlessness as we pressed onward... stop making the audience do the work - YOUR job - of putting the characters feelings and experience into words FOR you!! The "she did this. she felt that" narration was extremely bland and lazy to a point of being grating, like nails on a chalkboard you want to shut it off, and it should NOT feel that way.
I realize I'm still recommending, I still think it's a unique and fun game, but hoping if the developers or anyone looking to learn from a finished product sees this, that it'll help guide future development, because this was a really unnecessary miss. If you'd demoed the game with a writing group, etc, this is something they would've been able to pick up on and offer guidance around. This game feels like it was meant to be, in part, a love letter to stories. And it fell severely, severely short on the delivery of narration. Like: "Timmy fell down. Timmy felt sad. Timmy felt lost. Timmy was always lost." vs. "His feet were a blur beneath him, and he stumbled, face down into the dirt. A pit inside him widened and a lump grew in his throat. He knew not where he was, and for a moment, he wasn't sure if he ever did." Dumb example, I know, I'm just trying to demonstrate show vs. tell, hopefully it's clear.

This is a fun little adventure, but it probably won't make you any better at typing. The concept is inspired, if not an amalgam of disparate concepts, as you are a girl on a fox who is attacking insect nests by spelling words to proceed. The graphics and music are great, but I find the tired "narrator voice telling the story as you play" cliche kind of dull and dragged it down a bit for me, especially since there really isn't any story. Uncovering parts of the map is really well done, and the game gets progressively harder as it goes on, making it a decent enough challenge while still being very easy.
You basically spell words to manipulate obstacles and defeat enemies. You soon get four elemental abilities that vary the game play, though once you get the lightning the game gets too easy since you can chain attack multiple enemies at once and any challenge the game had ended here. There are simplistic puzzles and the exploration element is overall well done. I like the fact that you can buy upgrades and the game overall had just enough depth to keep me playing through to the end. Unfortunately, some of the achievements are terrible and I had to spend hours grinding in the arena to unlock them. Further, the arena itself is broken since people have cracked the game's code and most of the scores on there are from people using cheats.
The reason it won't make you any better at typing is because you aren't typing logical sentences but rather random words with abrupt stops. I noticed some typing errors that I made without realizing it, but the game didn't really give any guidance on correcting these mistakes. The only thing I really learned was that typing is more of a mental exercise more than anything, at least for someone who types regularly. I would get stumped up on certain words while others I could type immediately. If you're already competent at typing you will breeze through this, and if not, it probably won't make you any better. Also, the "adaptive mode" seems to not do anything other than make the game ridiculously easy if you fail over and over. Presumably, because that never happened while I played, and playing perfect didn't make the game much harder.